SuperSecret is a family-friendly internet world for older kids and teenagers with a strong focus on casual gaming and exploration. Although only few of its kiddie users may know, the visual design of this Flash project is strongly reminiscent of classical 2D graphic adventures of the early nineties with its hand-drawn scrolling graphics and its point-and-click movement. The core gameplay, however, has a certain RPG feel to it due to its character development system.
After choosing one of eight different character models for each gender and customizing its looks, the player finds himself standing around as a newbie in the starter room where the first NPCs offer help and guidance. As SuperSecret‘s character development system doesn’t track levels like oh so many other RPG’s, but lets the player mature instead, the user doesn’t start at level one, but at ten years of in-game age. The age level can be raised by accumulating age points, a goal to be achieved mainly by carrying out two activities:
1) Casual gaming
The developers licensed many of those free flash games from all over the internet to be played within SuperSecret, too many to list them here with more being added constantly. Giving those games some play time will reward the player with age points and some in-game currency which is called Spenders. It’s not important whether the user does well playing the games, just playing will suffice to get the rewards.
2) Questing
There are many NPC’s placed in the game world that either sell something or have one or more quests ready for user consumption. Most of the time, the quests are of the FedEx kind where one or more items need to be found and delivered to someone. Besides lots of age points and Spenders, the player can acquire many items here that can be sold or used.
Every new age level achieved will result in certain improvements of the gaming experience. Exemplary, the developers’ present for the user’s eleventh birthday is his/her own apartment which can be stuffed with all kinds of furniture. Making age twelve will see the user becoming a pet owner, age thirteen will give access to new areas of the game world and, more importantly, will change the visual appearance of the player rendering him taller and more mature. Later on players can buy cars and achieve their driver’s license, put their Spenders to a bank account and gain interest, and more.
The social side of SuperSecret is simple and clean to keep the game family-friendly. Two chat systems are available, one is SimpleChat where only pre-defined messages can be exchanged, the other one is SuperChat (after parents’ approval) which works like a normal chat system with heavy content filtering. Furthermore, players can make friends with others, throw parties in their apartment, or send gifts (not only pleasant ones) around.
